2007+July+13

Logger Notes Friday, July 13, 2007 Alexa Harrelson

We started our day as usual with the reading of yesterday’s log. It was wonderfully done as a pirate story. This elicited a dialog about National Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th.

Jeff has organized us and as teachers we are color coded: Red folder is put papers that you want copies to be made of Purple folder is to put finished assignments into Green folder is for graded work

Jeff also reminded us how Blogmeister from Wikispaces is organized. He showed us how to find the comments so we could read them. Here is a list of things to click to get there. SCKWP.wikispaces.wiki Class Blogmeister Your name (on the Right side of page) Login (top of page) (put full name and SCKWP as password) Article (middle top of page) Click on the article that you wish to see the comments for (bottom of page) Comments will be on the bottom of that page. The neat thing is that if you get suggestions for your piece, you can change your piece on that very page and then save it. Cool!!

Renee did the **writing prompt** today. She had noticed that all of the prompts so far had some kind of prop and we had not used the sense of smell yet. She told us that we could make up a fiction story or use something from the past to describe any of the pictures of smells that she had collected. As we listened to each person we got to try the different types of applause that Tera Lyn gave us. What fun!

Linda did her **Teacher Demo.** After an encouraging pep-talk we learned how to take a paragraph and teach children how to convert it into a poem. She encouraged us to find a real audience for our kids. This way there is a true reason for them to write. Her expectations for the students for the year are for 20 published pieces and she grades one each 9 weeks. They grade their others themselves and she showed us a rubric that they use. She also showed us her “word burrito o” which is a structure for a paragraph that I will be using. She reminded us that students do not always picture things as they read and that she uses the phrase “digital picture in your mind”. Good idea!

Mary shared her personal writing during **Reader’s Chair**. The birthday poem is a really nice gift with a personal touch. It’s also great for the person who has everything.

Wendy’s **Article Summary** discussed revision. It pointed out that writers often edit as they go along. This is perfectly normal and even preferred if you look at all of the good writers who do it.

This sparked a discussion about recursive writers and peer editors. It was suggested to give peer editors specific things to look for. A way to encourage editing is with play dough. Have the students make a pencil holder. Smash it and make it again. Smash it and then let the students take a little bit of each other’s colors of play dough to decorate it to make a really pretty end product. This is editing.

Terri’s **Article Summary** was on how to make a writing project better when you ask them about what they did over their weekend. A quick write would include; Brainstorming – 5 minutes – list all of the activities that happened Descriptive details – list at many as you can on you favorite choice – 2 minutes Paragraph – using details write a paragraph – 15 minutes

Discussion included the practice of writing on demand or actually timing out the words written/minute

Discussion also included the high school college prep programs.

Don’t forget Lunch at Merl’s on Monday!